


love too will ruin us

by naeildo



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 18:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21058640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naeildo/pseuds/naeildo
Summary: As fate and whatever misplaced sense of desperation would have it, she's standing outside your door, soggy bangs covering her eyes, Dior bag soaked straight through with rain.





	love too will ruin us

_Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.  
These, our bodies, possessed by light.  
Tell me we’ll never get used to it._

  
  
  
  
_2021_  
  
She doesn't remember it, but you do: before all of this, you saw her, Prefect's tie waving around in the wind, getting off a bike before taking the senior's hand. She had a set of choppy bangs that looked strangely flattering on her face, and a thin layer of lipstick that she wasn't supposed to be wearing if she'd just come from school. She hadn't told you about this date.  
  
You'd just taken another bite of your ice cream and walked down to the concrete seats scattered along the bend of the Han River.  
  
You don't remember this either - not until years later, gasping awake under the weight of her body, her hair falling in the very same way, and it travels like a shock through your arms, down to the tips of your fingers.  
  
"Hey," you say, and your voice comes out rough with sleep. You push the wisps of hair away from her face. She doesn't stir. "Hey," you say, again, and wonder why you're crying.  
  
  
  
_2014_  
  
You'd agreed that university would be a fresh start, so the two of you keep your distance for a whole of two weeks before Nayeon just started following you back to your dorm, marking more and more parts of your territory as shared ones, and now she's lying on your bed, scrolling through her phone as you try to parse out what is looking more and more like Greek running across your laptop screen.  
  
"Did you know that Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone?" She has her legs strewn over your sheets that you just straightened out an hour ago, and your bolster's already been thrown somewhere on the other side of the room. Only an hour and she's already torn through whatever order you'd tried to establish like a hurricane.  
  
"Who, then?"  
  
"He just patented it. The guy who actually invented it is called... Antonio Muchi. Meuchi. Is that how you pronounce that? Look," she says, grabbing at your arm, and you do, squinting at the webpage she's blown up on her phone.  
  
"Antonio Meucci. Me-oo-chi. Less emphasis on the 'oo'."  
  
"Me-oo-chi," she sounds out, into the curve of your shoulder. You're still not sure why you're Nayeon's go-to guide for English when all the experience you have is that one year you lived in New Jersey while she has tons of gyopos hanging around waiting on her every move, but you never really claimed to understand Nayeon in the first place.  
  
"You know you can just read the Korean page like a normal person, right?" Out of the corner of your eye, you can see her shaking her head, brown hair falling into her eyes. "Is this for an assignment? I had no idea performing arts extended into the history of science."  
  
"No." A beat. And then, softer, almost like she's unsure: "I'm going out for dinner with a bunch of my friends later."  
  
"Okay," you say, not quite sure where she's going with this. "Congrats."  
  
"You should come along," she says.  
  
"And tell them about the inventor of the telephone?"  
  
"So they can meet _you_, Jeongyeon-ssi," Nayeon says, slipping her arms around your chest. It's hard to breathe. "You know, my best friend of ten years."  
  
"I have a test tomorrow," you say. Technically true. Mini lecture test worth less than one percent of your grade, but it's still a test.  
  
"Come on," Nayeon says, and leans over your shoulder, chin digging into the flesh. She studies the numbers and symbols on your screen as if they'll start to make sense if she stares long enough. "I tell them about you all the time."  
  
"And I'm happy to live in their imagination."  
  
"Why are you being so difficult about this?" You recognize this tone. The one she takes with you when she's not getting what she wants, and the one that you acquiese to more than you'd like to admit. But you have a test tomorrow, and an assignment due after that, and a sudden and inexplicable desire to prove to Nayeon that she doesn't get to order you around like a soldier.  
  
"Why are _you _being so difficult about this?" When you spin around to face her, Nayeon's mouth is drawn in a thin line, but even then she's still pretty. You've admitted it to yourself enough times for it to not matter - that even without the makeup, even in one of your big, oversized sweaters hanging off her frame, she still looks beautiful.  
  
"I just wanted-"  
  
"I have a life, too, unnie," you bite out, "and it doesn't always include you." It comes out bitter on your tongue, even if you don't believe it, even if the way her face falls makes you want to lean forward, press your fingers to her jaw. Tell her you're sorry. You've had many fights over the years, but you've always been the first one to bend, and it's exhausting. Orbiting around her sun. So you swivel back to face your laptop, typing with newfound vigour. The ache in your chest builds.  
  
"Sorry," you hear her say, after a while, listen to the rustling of the sheets as she grabs her bag. "I'll leave you alone."  
  
  
  
You find her later, at night, knocking on her door at 3am. When she opens the door, you know she hasn't been sleeping, eyes still wide from doing whatever she was doing. Probably watching Netflix late into the night again.  
  
"Can I come in?"  
  
She walks into the dorm and you follow, letting the door click shut behind you.  
  
"Unnie," you say, and don't really know what to say after that. "How was dinner?"  
  
"Good." She's looking at you under the soft glow of the lights in her dorm, and it's an expression you've never seen before, her face sallow, lips turned down. She's hunching forward like something's cracked her chest wide open. It's a strange thing, falling in love. You realize it, in that room, when you find you can't bear to see that on her face again, when you'd do anything to rid her of it. Maybe it's been forever. Maybe you were only afraid to quantify it, to name it.  
  
"I know you're just trying to get me to socialize more," you blurt out, and she's still staring at you mutely. "I'm - sorry." Without knowing you've started to wring your hands in front of your stomach. Her eyes follow the motion.  
  
"I want to be -" You want to be -  
  
"Truce?" She offers, and her voice is smaller than you've ever remembered hearing.  
  
"Yes," you breathe, and the feeling of her chest pressed to yours feels like drowning and coming up for air all at once.  
  
  
  
  
_2015_  
  
"Nose job. Yay or nay?"  
  
"Nay."  
  
"Braces."  
  
"Nay."  
  
"Liposuction?"  
  
"Are you insane?"  
  
She leans over to poke at your cheek, the back of her knees lifting from your kneecaps, and TV becomes unwatchable now with the obstruction. You roll your eyes.  
  
"Yoo Jeongyeon, at the rate you're going, I'd think you're trying to keep me ugly so you can have me all to yourself."  
  
"Oh, please don't misunderstand me," you snipe, and she hits you across the back of your head. Your chin lolls forward into your chest.  
  
You mean: _have you seen the people who'd fall to their knees just because of your face? Do you know about how I'd watch you get lost in a crowd and just know I'd be able to find you again? You couldn't be ugly if you tried._  
  
"With a bit of work I'll be as beautiful as the actresses in your dramas," Nayeon says, quietly, finger listing across your arm. "Then maybe you'll look at me too."  
  
  
  
  
_2017_  
  
You've never really believed in the idea of destiny. Nayeon says she believes in it sometimes, when it's convenient, like right now: when you're just trying to make squid ink pasta and she has to kill time somehow with irreverent small talk.  
  
"It's like how I always knew Jeongyeon and I were going to be together."  
  
"Please stop misleading our new friends," you shout, angling it in a direction somewhere over your shoulder. The two girls had just moved in over the weekend, and they seem to both be people who respect basic cleanliness and hygiene, which is really all you need for flatmates. Also, it doesn't hurt that they're really gorgeous.  
  
"I'm not _misleading_ them."  
  
"Sorry," you say, cranking down the fire on the stove and tossing the pasta a little with your free hand. "Nayeon likes to pretend that we're in love so she can practice her lines with me. I'm kind of a stand-in boyfriend."  
  
It's getting easier to say these things, easier when Nayeon goes out for dates more frequently, easier when she comes back to the apartment with a guy tucked under her arm and hangs a sock on the door. You put in your earplugs on those nights, but lying and tossing around never brings you any closer to sleep.  
  
When you turn around to parcel out the pasta, the three girls on the couch are staring back at you; Dahyun looks like she just doesn't know what to say, but Sana is smiling, the corners of her lips lifted. Nayeon is already looking at her phone.  
  
"I wouldn't have guessed myself," Sana says, quietly, and you can't tell what it is in her voice - whether the mirth is from speaking a second language or something else entirely. "She seems to really like you."  
  
  
Later, in your lecture, you think about the concept of gravity somewhere in the middle of the third time your professor crashes his computer and has to restart it to find his slides. You'd explained it once, to a group of students you relief taught for in the summer holidays.  
  
If the object has mass and exerts so large a force on you, you cannot help but fall. Unless something else stops you.  
  
There was a girl - bright-eyed, curious. Interested. She had a pencilcase with an astronaut printed on it. A beacon in a room of bored and listless children.  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"A parachute," you'd said, smiling.  
  
"Oh!" She'd been a small girl, pigtails high in her hair. "But you'll still fall, right? Just more slowly."  
  
"Exactly right," you'd affirmed, and tried to remember when you first fell. The first scrape of the knee. The first time your hand missed the landing on the monkey bars.  
  
There's never been a parachute when it comes to Nayeon.  
  
  
  
  
_2017_  
  
In a way, you'd anticipated it. In a way, you hadn't.  
  
A few months ago you had held her hand in a waiting room, mumbling lines in a script to her that you'd memorized well enough yourself, and today her drama is airing its first episode on the screen. You say these things to her all the time - you're going to make it; they can't deny your star power. You have an objectively beautiful face.  
  
She says it back to you, as much as she can - you're so good at electrical engineering. Tell me about circuits. I _love_ Antonio Meucci. She can barely put in a battery the right way around.  
  
Somewhere between your trip to the bathroom and stumbling back into the living room, her face has appeared on the screen, and you take in a breath. It's not difficult to fall in love with Im Nayeon. For the people who'll be seeing her for the first time tonight, it'll feel a lot like falling. But whatever's inside your chest feels a lot more like the way you never forget how to ride a bicycle. Habit. Impulse. Hopskotching through the chalk. The curl of your arm around her shoulders on nights when she can't sleep.  
  
  
  
Later, she phones you from the cast party. The premiere was a success - people are searching for the drama online, the clips are topping Naver, and her name is climbing up the search rankings. There's so much ambient noise around her, the sound of beer bottles clinking. A real, pulpable excitement. You can almost taste it.  
  
"I knew you would do it," you say, even though you didn't. You've always been the realist. You listen to it - the white noise, the sound of her breathing into the receiver.  
  
"How was your company dinner?" It's abrupt; you'd told her about it weeks ago. You didn't think she'd remember.  
  
"Terrible."  
  
"Oh," she breathes. Nayeon never quite knows what to say these days, wrapped up in her schedules and success, contending with you in your little failures. "I wish you were here," she says, finally, and you can tell from the lilt of her voice that she means it. Longing cracks like a livewire through your chest.  
  
"Everyone else's plus ones are," she says, and you hear it - it's there more often than not now, the honesty tucked inside the jibes, the way she's so close to saying the things you don't know if you want to hear.  
  
"Better find yours quick then," you say, and take another gulp of beer.  
  
  
  
  
_2018_  
  
There is - there's one time. One evening that's seared into your memory, hangs there, claws and all.  
  
You're drunk. She's not, because she's driving you home after a celebratory party, the first time in a while you've seen each other. Celebrating what again?  
  
"You okay? Your face is kind of blue." She's glancing over at you at the stoplight, the colours of the night dancing across her face in patterns. Your fingers curl around the passenger panel, and the lights in front of you are starting to blur.  
  
"Jeong?" You hear her say, louder and - concerned.  
  
"I'm - fine," you say, feeling the bile rise behind your throat. "Sorry, I really shouldn't have drunk that much."  
  
In these moments there are no petty words to throw back at her - the banter stops, and all you see are Nayeon's eyes, flickering back and forth between the road and your face.  
  
"I don't mean that," Nayeon says, but you can feel the car lurch forward when the stoplight turns green.  
  
"We're pretty near your place, but we can just stop by the side of the road if you need to - I don't know, drink water or something. We can get you some food from the convenience store-"  
  
"Nayeon," you manage to get out, bracing yourself against the dashboard. "Please just drive."  
  
  
She has to drag you into the apartment, already knows your code, so it's just about lugging your lifeless body across the finish line. This should mean something, you manage to think, slumped onto her shoulder. Her hands are already working at unbuttoning your jeans after she's settled you on the couch.  
  
"Hey," you say. Your head's a little clearer than it was, but now the blood's just pounding like a drum against your skull. Your hand curls around Nayeon's wrist, and she stops where she's pulled her jeans halfway down your legs to look back up at you.  
  
That was it: today's party was for her. Her first supporting role - in the Reply series, no less.  
  
"You did it," you breathe, the laugh in your chest worming its way out. "Actress extraordinaire." The brightest future reserved for her and her only, and you won't ever stand in her way. Won't even risk it.  
  
And Nayeon is looking at you like there's something wrong.  
  
"Are you okay?"  
  
"It's just-" Your mouth runs. Your head feels light. Her hair is cascading over her shoulders in waves, the sea green of her shirt making her eyes look like oceans. "You look really pretty tonight." Looking at her has often felt like looking at the sun, and with the alcohol everything is brighter, burns at the edges of your vision.  
  
"Jeong-" Nayeon says, and you watch her shoulders pull backwards. "I'm just gonna get you to bed, okay? I have to drive home before it's too late too."  
  
"I think-" And runs, and runs - "I really think you should kiss me right now."  
  
You can pinpoint it - the moment you've stepped across the line, the way her eyes widen, arms slackening at her side. "What?"  
  
"It's good practice," you say, and you're already reaching out for her, arms wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her up to where you are. "It's _fun_," you hear yourself giggle, because whatever else you've wanted to tell her for years has been buried so deep that you don't know the shape of the words anymore. "You can use tongue, I won't mind."  
  
"Jeongyeon," Nayeon says, hands pressed to your sternum, eyes darting down to your lips. But she doesn't look happy. "You're drunk."  
  
"I'll get to say I've kissed a cast member from the SOON TO BE BEST DRAMA OF ALL TIME!" The last part comes out loud, echoes around the empty apartment, and that must be the reason Nayeon flinches, a full-body one, and why she moves to pull away from you, and why she looks like she's about to cry.  
  
"Hey," you say, reaching out for her, but Nayeon pulls her arm out of your reach again, and it feels like something stretches through your chest, a gasp of pain that you haven't felt since you scraped the flesh clear off both your knees jumping over the fence with her in uni. But this isn't even real. It isn't even real, so why does it still hurt?  
  
"Please don't say these things if you don't-" Nayeon says, turning her head away, and you think: _if you don't what? If you don't feel like every moment is torture? If you don't feel like you can't breathe when she moves closer? If you don't think of telling her every day that you want her, want her so much it makes you want to die, but you can't because no one wants that kind of stain on their career, because no one knows wants anything to do with an actress who's in love with another girl.  
  
No one wants a stupid girl who can't progress in her dead-end job, especially not a rising star.  
  
If you don't what? What?_  
  
She's pulling your jeans all the way down and wrapping your hips under a towel. You can feel it, the scrape of fabric against your legs. The pounding in your head reaches a crescendo. "Just - please don't do that to me."  
  
  
  
_2019_  
  
For the most part, the both of you successfully avoid bringing up the events of that night. Sometimes Nayeon still flinches when you lean over to get something, crowding into her space, and you pretend not to notice.How do you tell your best friend you weren't joking when you said you wanted to kiss her? What do you call the ache in your chest that'll make it stop?  
  
So you don't. If you ignore it long enough you'll circle back to each other anyway, and in the meantime you've started scouring dating apps, making profiles on the ones you know she isn't on. It's not that you're avoiding her, but it's just - easier this way.  
  
It's all about rhythm. Building habits. Ignoring the things you have to ignore to keep the peace. It helps that you just got a job further away from the city centre, and Nayeon's schedules are just _impossible_ to work around these days - when she isn't filming for a drama she's at a CF meeting, or stowed away in some huge business social.  
  
And _you're _so terribly good at running away.  
  
  
You're on a taxi home when your phone rings, and you barely glance at the caller ID before putting it to your ear.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Hi," she says, and you'd know that voice anywhere. It's rough with something you can't put a finger on, and you're already starting to strategize, analyze - could you make a turn from here to her house, or drop off at the station down the road.  
  
"You okay?"  
  
"I'm fine. I was just- how's work? That - project you were talking about." You go through a mental checklist - she doesn't sound hysterical or devastated, there's no signs of sniffling, no rising tone that marks her usual descent into panic. Just a kind of - strange apprehension, almost. It's become more familiar between the two of you these days, the way it's never been before.  
  
"Good," you lie. The engines didn't start up quickly enough again. You're back to square one. Your boss yelled at you in front of your colleagues. You picked up your phone and walked to the bathroom, sat down in a stall, and stared at your screen. You didn't call her. "Nayeon, is everything okay-"  
  
"You know that one time you fell down the stairwell and started bleeding from the head and then I had to bring you to the hospital?"  
  
You can't hold back a smile at the memory, and it's fond, still. It was a halloween prank gone wrong, and she'd stayed by your side days after, bringing you all sorts of bubble tea as penance, leaving crescent moon shapes in your palms from how hard she was clutching at you.  
  
"I would never forget - I had to wear stitches in my head for like, a whole week after getting out of the hospital."  
  
"Yeah," Nayeon says, and you can't tell why she sounds like she has something stuck in her throat. Was it a bad day on set? What should you say to make her laugh?  
  
"Sometimes - Sana still calls me Jeonkenstein, you know, and just a few days ago - "  
  
"We had to film a scene today," she says, cutting you off. It doesn't sound like she's amused. "I was just supposed to keep crying, for hours and hours, and the director kept telling me to just think of the thing I'm most afraid of."  
  
_Oh._  
  
"Jeong, I just kept thinking of you. Your face was so white, and you were barely holding my hand. I don't think I'd ever been so terrified of losing anything more than I was scared of losing you."  
  
"Nayeon-"  
  
"_Let me finish_. And when we had to film this scene, a while back, they told me to be so happy, like crazy happy - think of the moment where you felt completely free, like you were flying. And I just kept thinking about us running out of the school gates and the alarms blaring behind us-"  
  
"Please stop it," you breathe, before you can even think. Your voice is wetter than you want it to be. Your press your palm to your right temple. "Please don't say it."  
  
"I'm in love with you."  
  
It cleaves through you like a knife. You can't feel your hands.  
  
"Nayeon, I - " A motorcycle swerves in front of your taxi. The driver honks. "I'm seeing someone."  
  
Silence. The ruffling of what sounds like her scripts.  
  
"You're not," she says. Shouts, a little. "You're lying."  
  
"We've gone on a few dates, and -"  
  
"Is it a girl?"  
  
"What? I don't - Yes, but why -"  
  
"So it's just _me _you don't want." Maybe it's better that you can't see her now - that she can't see you, that she doesn't know that just listening to the tremor and rage in her voice is enough to make you feel like your stomach is caving in, that you have to press your hand over the mouthpiece and take deep breaths, in and out.  
  
"Nayeon," you bite in the sob that's half-formed in your throat. "I just - don't see you that way," you lie. You know how to do that now, even when it feels like your heart is beating so fast that it's about to explode. I'm fine. Work's going well, I'm eating all three meals, please don't worry about me, unnie. I'll pay the rent soon, I just hit a snag at the bank. I'm busy, Nayeon, and you are too.  
  
"Okay," she says. You hear her let out a breath, short and sharp against the receiver. "Sorry," she says again, and hangs up.  
  
The taxi ahjusshi is looking at you through the rearview window. If he sees you crying, he doesn't say anything about it.  
  
  
  
  
_2019_  
  
At some stupid base level, you'd hoped that she would come stumbling in one night announcing that she loved you more than whatever horrible words you'd said to each other, and you'd say _me too_, and she'd tackle you onto your bed and laugh for being silly, but this isn't uni, and whatever's between the two of you isn't something to dance around anymore, and you're too tired to cook dinner for yourself, much less summon the energy to confront the monster that's grown in your backyard.  
  
So, instead, all you get is an alert at 3pm while you're at your desk. Your deskmate Jiwoo leans over, wide-eyed, and flaps her arms at you.  
  
"No way," she breathes, and you read the line on the screen three times before anything even remotely makes sense.  
  
**[BREAKING] ACTRESS IM NAYEON SPOTTED ON A COZY DATE WITH BTS MEMBER KIM NAMJOON. BOTH AGENCIES HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THEY ARE SEEING EACH OTHER WITH GOOD FEELINGS.**  
  
Jiwoo is blinking curiously at you, waiting for you to react.  
  
"I don't really know them," you force out, and hope she doesn't notice the way you're blinking back your tears. "They seem like nice people, though," you try, and Jiwoo latches onto that crumb, launches into a speech about how they're the perfect, scandal-free, beloved-by-all couple, but you're barely listening, the noise inside your head turned up so loud you think you might just pass out.  
  
  
  
Later, when you're back in your apartment, you throw a pack of instant rice and soup in the microwave and pull up Kakaotalk on your desktop. Her face blinks back at you in the rounded corners, bright and flaw-free and all the things you're not. At least her boyfriend's not inside.  
  
_why  
  
what were you thinking??????  
  
why didn't you tell me  
  
i thought we  
  
i thought we were  
  
something_  
  
But you should be happy, right? This is what you wanted. Her star, rising. You out of her way. The world flocking to her feet, the girl who has it all. It's annoying, all you can really think about is how even after a month of radio silence she manages to destroy whatever calm you've procured for yourself by doing something that doesn't even relate to you.  
  
Delete delete delete.  
  
_I heard the news_. _Please be happy._  
  
You slam the cover of your laptop down.  
  
In the morning, when you wake up, cheek pressed to the cold metal of the machine, the soup and rice sits there plaintively, laughing at you.  
  
  
  
_2020_  
  
You stop talking, and you're miserable, and as if you've had enough misery for the decade, the world starts spinning in the opposite direction for once in your life when someone who jumped ship from your department and wheelied back home years ago comes knocking on your door.  
  
It's not really anything yet, Tzuyu says, but half of your heart is already in it if it helps you get out of this godforsaken place, and she's prepared the numbers, the risks, the statistics. All you're staring at is the part of the documents that says **Assistant Director: Korea **and the projected starting salary. Your vision starts to swim.  
  
"We're still operating mainly from Taiwan at the moment, so team building for the korea office is going to take a bit of work. I've gathered some of the -"  
  
"Tzuyu," you blurt out, and it sounds almost like you're at the edge of a laugh, disbelieving and hysterical even to yourself. "Sorry, but - I mean, why - me, of all people -"  
  
She stares at you, big eyes wide and earnest as they've always been, but tinged with a kind of shrewdness that the years spent back home must have given her.  
  
"Remember when I first entered the department?"  
  
"Yes," you say, dishonestly, after a long pause. The first few months of work felt like nothing but a blur of going in and out of the labs and coming up with nothing new, and Tzuyu had been a formless part of that.  
  
"When I couldn't finish my project, you stayed back overnight to help me crunch the numbers and didn't claim any credit for my presentation after. You even wrote my script for me because I didn't know half the words in Korean."  
  
Oh. That one.  
  
"And I bombed my own presentation, Tzuyu. Being stupid enough to help you isn't some kind of virtue."  
  
"You care about other people, unnie," she says, and her accent is just thin enough that you can still understand her. She leans forward and lays a hand over your own, jostling the coffee cups spread out over the cafe table. "That's enough for me."  
  
  
  
_2020_  
  
As fate and whatever misplaced sense of desperation would have it, she's standing outside your door, soggy bangs covering her eyes, Dior bag soaked straight through with rain. Her eyes are dark under the dim light of the corridor.  
  
"You could've taken a taxi," you hear yourself saying, even if your brain is screaming something else entirely, like _I haven't seen you in a year and you look like shit and I miss you miss you miss you_. Your hand doesn't move though it feels like it's burning up by your side, searing with an ache that won't be quenched until it's pressed against her skin. "You'll fall sick."  
  
Isn't she still filming that drama? Just yesterday, somewhere in Chuncheon, someone spotted her walking around with her hair wild, orange plastic bag hanging from her fingers.  
  
"Jeongyeon," she says, and hot tears gather behind your eyes. Shit. "Please don't get mad at me."  
  
"For what, exactly? Because I can think of about five things right now." You want to cross your arms, but you don't. You're working on ridding yourself of those little physical defense mechanisms, and she just reappears and throws everything off, like she always does. "Why are you here?"  
  
"Tell me you love me," she says, and it feels like time stops altogether.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Just-" She says, and does that thing where she runs her hand through her hair, leans forward on the balls of her feet. "Just tell me you do. You don't have to tell me you're in love with me or some bullshit like that because I know you said you're fucking _not_, so just tell me, and I'll -"  
  
"And you'll what?" The words she wants to hear are more familiar than you want them to be, tucked behind your tongue whenever she was around, sleeping beside you after a long day of auditions where she didn't want to go home to an empty apartment.  
  
"I just need to - I just need to be sure, because - I don't - I'm not sure of anything but that," it comes out in a rush of air, and she's lifting an arm to wipe at her eyes, and everything is crumbling.  
  
"_Nayeon_," you say, at the same time a voice from behind you calls your name.

  
  
  
_2021_  
  
She doesn't tell you that she's going. You find out on Saturday morning through an article that's rocketed to the top of Naver's front page. She hasn't really told you anything in a while, so you shouldn't feel spurned, but you read every article about it on Naver before boarding the train, and watch someone else read about it over their shoulder, too. It's like a strange masochistic impulse.  
  
It's an ambitious project - three months long in a rainy European town, a budget of hundreds of millions of won. By the time you reach your stop, you've learned more about Exeter than you ever thought you'd need to.  
  
It's not that you _want_ to talk about Nayeon, but Jihyo has been there with the two of you since you grew up, even through the fallout, and it's just natural to have a common topic, which is how you end up here:  
  
"It must be nice, right? She was obsessed with Park Chi-woo when we were in uni. I mean, he's a little older now but-"  
  
"It's like meeting an old friend from your childhood, isn't it? Minus the posters she had of him on her wall." Jihyo smiles at a little girl walking past their window. You bite your tongue before asking the next question, but you just have to know.  
  
"Did you know about this?"  
  
The food at this restaurant isn't great - sometimes it tastes like cardboard. But you're still drawn there by a siren sound in the form of a flickering signboard with mis-spelled hiragana and that gaudy salmon mascot outside the doors, somehow, so your friends just have to suffer the consequences.  
  
It's raining outside. Jihyo is staring at you assessingly. "I did."  
  
"I-" You wonder if you should tell the truth. But what is it, exactly?  
  
"She saw Chaeyoung. At my house. She was just sleeping over to work on the floor plans, but she probably thought she was -"  
  
"Oh," Jihyo says. She digs in to the udon she was just staring listlessly at moments ago. "You didn't clarify it with her after that?"  
  
"I mean," you say, and it doesn't make sense to be so indignant. You stopped talking months ago, when she'd picked her new project and you started work in a different part of the country. "You'd think she would find out if I was seeing anyone, or - like, anything about my life - before running all the way to my apartment - which I didn't even know - because -"  
  
"Jeong," Jihyo says, wrapping a hand around yours. "You don't have to justify things to me."  
  
"Okay," you say. Breathe, and a long breath you didn't know you were holding tumbles out.  
  
"But I wish you'd let her make the decision," she says, quietly. The rain pours louder, harder, like it's water in a rolling drum.  
  
"There was a possibility she would choose me," you say, and Jihyo is still looking at you, steadily. "She's impulsive, and follows her heart too much, and thinks she can have it all. And besides, the start-up is finally taking off -"  
  
"So what if she is?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're talking about everything in past tense. She broke up with him a year ago. You know this. So what if she's impulsive and in love with you?"  
  
Your breath hitches.  
  
"She - isn't, not anymore -"  
  
"Stop thinking that her wanting to love you is the worst thing in the world," she says, and her hand is warm when it curls around yours, pressed against the cold metal of the sushi conveyor belt.  
  
But it is. It's the worst thing in the world, being known and loved by the force of nature that is Im Nayeon.  
  
  
  
_2021_  
  
You send Seungyeon a picture of the view outside the airplane window before turning your phone to airplane mode, and the anxiety in your stomach churns, relentlessly. It's the first time you've been out of the country - Jejudo was a plane ride away, but you didn't even have to take off your shoes because of how short the distance was.  
  
_London_. London seems oceans away - one ocean, the plane screen informs you, and you squint at it again as Chaeyoung settles down beside you, kicking at the foot rest under the seat in front.  
  
"Stay still," you tell her, and she laughs, draping a hand over your arms crossed in front of your chest.  
  
"'Stay still', says she, after going to the bathroom five times before getting on the plane," she teases, and if it were anyone else you'd be annoyed, but this is Chaeyoung, who's laboured beside you so many nights that you've stopped keeping count.  
  
Google Maps says that the distance from London to Exeter is 4 hours by train. If you went to the train station on an off-day, if you took it down to the city, if you were stupid and foolish and silly and ridiculous - and the plane starts rolling down the runway, and you're breathing so hard that Chaeyoung looks at you, smiling, the ground disappearing from under you.  
  
  
  
The pilot does not stick the landing. You don't have much to compare it to, but you're very sure that he does not, with the way you have to reach out for the little paper bag stuffed into the seat and hurl, Chaeyoung's hand sweeping across your back in gentle motions.  
  
"Welcome to Heathrow Airport," she mimics the announcer, in her best English, and you manage to get one laugh in before jerking forward again.  
  
  
  
There's a big fancy car waiting for the two of you when you step out of the airport doors with your names printed on in hangul, and everything feels larger than life here, the people rushing past you whole heads taller than you, the shouts in a language you're still getting a handle on, the small bright pink suitcase you're dragging along behind you.  
  
Two years ago you were in a cubicle typing out source codes that were going into the trash.  
  
"Chaeng?" You say, when you're both settled into the back of the car. She's looking out the window at the trees passing by, giving way to the occasional stretches of buildings. Your breath puffs out when you speak.  
  
"It's amazing, isn't it?" She says, and doesn't look back at you, chin propped up on her fist, the car moving endlessly forward.  
  
  
  
_2021_  
  
Chaeyoung brings you around, after you've settled the terms of the agreement and earned free time for yourselves, to museums, across street corners, to cafes.  
  
At night, you lie down in your bed and watch Chaeyoung sleep, blanket curled around herself, taking the small jagged shape of her knees, and scroll aimlessly down your phone. Your family chat still hasn't responded to any of the photos you've dumped into it.  
  
Half of your heart is always yearning for something you can put a shape to. A face to. You've buried it well enough the past year, drifting in and out of endless, _exciting_ work, but it's always there, in the back of your mind, the way she was back when she refused to leave you alone.  
  
"It's like being haunted by a ghost," you say to yourself, maybe a little too loudly, because Chaeyoung stirs, rubbing her eyes and turning to look at you.

"What's wrong?"

"It's nothing," you wave off, and she nods blearily, still in a dream, and falls back asleep.  
  
You open the Kakaotalk chat with her name on it, and the last texts you'd exchanged stares back at you:  
  
_I've heard the news. Please be happy._  
  
_You too.  
  
How are you doing?  
  
Hey, how are you?  
  
Jeongyeon...  
  
Hello?  
  
Sorry for walking in on you. I didn't know._  
  
You close the chat, and stare up at the ceiling before opening your texts. The last one you sent to her was about the tteokbokki that you were bringing to her apartment, and nothing's going to reach her this way, so you let it fall out: everything you'd dreamed of, buried away in yourself.  
  
_I'm not seeing anyone. That was just my colleague and if you'd just tried to make up with me instead of storming away maybe you'd know that and maybe I really miss you and I wish you were here with me instead of four hours away and I think I love you. I think I've loved you ever since you punched that guy in the face for me and I think I'll love you forever, even if I don't want to. I'm doing well. I'm eating well. What else? I'm in a startup now, but I'm sure Jihyo already told you. I hope Kookeu's doing well. I hope you're living well. _  
  
You press _send_, just for the catharsis of it, wait for the error message, but the bubble floats through and turns blue. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.  
  
Then the messages start coming in.  
  
_What?_  
  
_Where are you?_  
  
The screen lights up with her caller ID, and you can feel your heart hammering so loud you hear it in your ears. You press X, but she calls again, and again, until you just turn your phone off, flinging it onto the dresser and breathing heavily in the quiet room.  
  
"Chaeyoung," you say, walking over to her bed and shaking her awake. "I think I just made the biggest mistake of my life."  
  
  
  
  
_2021_  
  
You see her first, in the end, on a street where the camera crew are busy pushing at buttons and adjusting their equipment. Chaeyoung had convinced you to follow the commotion, saying that it was probably some parade, and you'd ended up here, wrapped in a crowd of people and the harsh brightness of studio-grade lights.  
  
_Of course_. Somehow, even though you'd left your phone off, took the pains to contact everyone else through Chaeyoung's phone instead of yours, she has still found you.   
  
(You've still found her.)  
  
Your feet are already taking you away from the scene, but Chaeyoung is beside you, anchoring you from running away, fingers curled in an iron grip around your wrist. And then she sees you, and you watch everything flicker across her face at once - surprise, the implausibility of all of it shocking her into messing up her take. And then the most dangerous one of all, the one you recognize instantly: determination.  
  
_You're not supposed to be here_, you think, and she's still staring at you, pink dress cinched around her waist, golden earrings dangling from her ears. _I was supposed to have more time to run away._  
  
"I have to go," you tell Chaeyoung, but right after you turn you can hear her shouting -  
  
_Yoo Jeongyeon_, she's yelling, over the crowd. _Yoo Jeongyeon, don't you dare walk away. _  
  
Holding up the entire crew. Hollering down the street, the filming, the order of things, running after you in her million dollar dress.  
  
  
  
  
_2017_  
  
"Do you?"  
  
"What?"  
  
Sana and Dahyun had gone out for dinner, and it was only the two of you, eating snacks out of a tupperware as you watched the leads miss each again other on screen. The perfect storm of missed opportunities. But you'd already checked the sypnosis, because you can't help it, and they got together in the end, which was why Nayeon agreed to watch this in the first place. But instead of watching it, all she'd been doing was bothering you with half-formed questions.  
  
"Believe in it."  
  
"_What_, unnie," you'd snapped, and the annoyance made her curl back a bit, remove her chin from your shoulder. You moved, instinctively, to assuage it, pressing your hand to her own until she relaxed against you.  
  
"The whole destiny shebang. People who are meant to be will always be. Bullshit, really."  
  
"Don't call it bullshit," you said, without thinking, and resolutely stared at her hands instead of her face. "You said you did, just now."  
  
"I want to," she said, and leaned even closer to you. It was dangerous territory, but there was something about the day and the fatigue in your bones that made you acquiesce, wrapping your arms around her. "I want to, but it feels like I keep getting stuck," she breathed, against your nape, hands in your lap, and you held stock-still against her, your heartbeat running out of time.  
  
  
  
  
_2021_  
  
Back in her hotel room, hours after the shoot:  
  
"You shouldn't have done that."  
  
"You shouldn't have tried to run," Nayeon counters, quickly, as if that's somehow a reasonable argument for holding up a production worth tens of millions. It's always her, only her, who brings everything out - every ugly, impatient emotion. The aching fondness that wells up, so loud and constant after all these years that you can't control it.  
  
"Nayeon -"  
  
"Jeongyeon," she says, much louder, loud enough that the people in the other room may hear her.  
  
"_What_ do you think you're doing," you hiss, lowly, and she's smiling at you, eyes so bright you're stunned into silence.  
  
"I don't care," she says, softer this time, but her smile promises something else. "I don't care anymore. You're here, and it's not bullshit."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Destiny," she says, inching closer to you across the small table. "You love me. I saw the text. You _love _me," she says, laughing. "YOU _LOVE _ME," she shouts, and you lunge forward, clamping a hand over her mouth.  
  
"I -," you stutter, and you don't know what you're fighting anymore, not when she's so close, again, reaching up to press her fingers against your face, not when she's made her choice, after all. Impulsive, wild, and impossible not to love.   
  
"We got the deal," you say, and she blinks, only for a moment, before she smiles even wider, leaning impossibly close.  
  
"Congratulations, Yoo Jeongyeon-ssi," she says, and presses quiet lips to the curve of your jaw. You turn boneless, hips pressed against the table, body held up by her hands, strong and steady against your face.   
  
"You've," to your cheek, "done," your nose, "so," your eyelids, fluttering closed in the heat she's spun around you, thumb flickering against the corner of your mouth. "Well."  
  
"Nayeon," you say, _plead_, and your voice is so wet, and so tired, and she's smiling so brightly at you when you open your eyes again that you can feel hot tears gathering behind your eyes. "I'm sorry," you breathe, and she laughs, the sound bounding across the hotel room. The sound you've tucked inside your heart.  
  
"You were horrible to me, weren't you?" She says, smiling, and the honesty startles you. Delights you. "Good thing I'm patient!"  
  
That hooks a laugh from you, and it comes out almost like a bark. Your hands drift to where hers are.  
  
"You're the furthest thing from -" But then she's pressing her lips to yours, warm and insistent, and she tastes like the mint that she stole from the hotel reception before coming up with you. Everything floods in - every unfathomable feeling, every lost love. Everything you've ever hidden away, torn into the light by her hands.  
  
She pushes closer, threading careful fingers through your hair, and you think: let's be brave. Let's be foolish. I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm sorry I kept you waiting.  


_Keep me in mind  
When you're ready  
I am here  
To take you every time_

**Author's Note:**

> (1) [scheherazade](http://www.fishousepoems.org/scheherazade/)  
(2) [love lost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMuuc_pqx2s)
> 
> this was originally written for TwiceFest Gazette: Volume 1 but then it went off the rails, and i picked it up again mostly because i just really at this moment wanted to write something that had a ridiculously and implausibly happy ending. hope you enjoy it despite the abject lack of realism and it being generally kind of terrible....
> 
> and, of course, the [quote](https://twitter.com/bunnyverse_/status/1176544997249708032)
> 
> you can find me at @[rainagaintmrw](https://twitter.com/rainagaintmrw) :)


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